Amateur and enthusiast photographers from all around the country have gathered their best images and submitted them to the expert judgement of our panel of industry leaders — Brett Stanley, Charles Howells, Katherine Williams, Kaye Davis, Mark Gee, Michael Miller, Richard Wood, Peter Robertson, and Simon Devitt.

For several years, the Sigma Amateur Photographer of the Year has been the country’s largest amateur photography contest and certainly the most popular online gallery of its kind. Each year, the quantity of entries increases, and so, too, the calibre of images improves. 2017’s contest received a record 9337 submissions across the 11 categories, many of which prove that advanced photographic technologies and techniques, such as focus stacking, aerial imaging, and timelapse, are no longer reserved for the pros.

Mysterious auroras swirl the midnight sky of this extremely remote mountain ranges near the Arctic circle. Technique Notes: This is a very complicated shot consists of 16 exposures. Fourteen consecutive frames using ISO 6300/f2.8/30-sec were used for focus-stacking and multi-frame-average-noise-reduction to get a high-quality, sharp foreground image under such difficult dark conditions. The reflection was captured using ISO 12800/f2.8/8 seconds. The aurora itself was recorded by tilting the lens to include more sky, using ISO 12800/f2.8/1-sec. The reflections, foreground, and the sky were stitched together to get the final image. The aurora was moving so fast that a slower shutter speed would have blurred its magical shape. These techniques were necessary to overcome the limitations of the camera sensor so I could capture what I saw with my naked eyes. Photographed in the Yukon Territory of Canada.

LPM Flickr Group Nov 2013 Collection“Every month we select the best submitted images to our LPM/Flickr group and add them here for all our members and visitors to admire. Furthermore, we might be selecting the best images from this list and will be asking members to submit them for the Magazine Cover and First/Final Frame section.”

How to calculate and use Hyperfocal distance for better landscape photographyHyperfocal distance, much like the “Sunny 16 Rule,” is one of those things that has arguably lost some relevance in the age of digital photography; the sophisticated metering and auto focusing systems built into digital cameras have helped make life a little easier in some ways.